Kasira stilled. “What?”
He ran a hand through his hair. Looked at her out of the corner of his impossible eyes. “If you stay here, you’ll die.”
Her eyes searched his, finding them depthless and full of shadows. There was no threat in his words, just a starkness that chilled her. “I don’t understand.”
He pushed off the couch with the sigh of a settling wind. “How could you?” he said, his back to her. “I’ve kept it from you since you arrived.” His hands worked at something she couldn’t see, the clink of metal cutting through the hiss of the fire. “But if you’re going to stay,trulystay, you should know the whole truth before you decide.”
She shifted aside to see what he’d placed on the mantel—his henolite rings. His back was still toward her, the cloth of his shirt spread tight across his broad shoulders. “There is more to becoming the Librarian of Amorlin than protecting beasts and navigating politics. The Library grants us immense power, but it comes at a cost.”
His fingers went to his ears, removing the earrings one by one. With each piece he peeled away, the last of the copper color leached from his hair, each strand turning snow white before her eyes. A black spotted tail appeared, his olive skin growing faint wisps of silver fur. When at last he faced her, his eyes were huge and silver, the irises slit like a cat’s. Her breath caught, but no matter how much she stared, she couldn’t bring her mind to accept what her eyes were seeing.
“It’s the magic,” he rasped. “It changes us.”
He tore away the last of the henolite from his body, leaving only the torc at his throat, and from his back sprouted two midnight-black wings.
All those times she had thought he was being vain, all the times she had caught him examining his reflection in a mirror—he hadn’t been admiring himself; he had been looking for changes, for cracks in his disguise. Flickers like the shadow of wings, the curve of claws. This was why he wore the henolite. This was the magic it had been suppressing.
Allaster was becoming a beast.
Slowly, carefully, Kasira gathered herself and approached him. Allaster withdrew, but with the mantel at his back, he had nowhere to go. He wouldn’t look at her, the fear in his eyes too heavy a burden to carry alone. She ran one finger along the curve of a wing and felt him shudder, then lifted her hand to cup his face. He relaxed, just the slightest, and leaned into her touch, the layer of fur soft beneath her fingers.
“You’re still you,” she said softly and heard his breath seize.
“You don’t understand,” he rasped. “The more I use my magic, the longer I hold it, the more it will consume me. Eventually, I will become a beast in every way, but feral—wrong.I won’t remember myself or the Library. I won’t remember you.”
Her hand fell away, her horror growing with each word he spoke. “There is a final test each Assistant must pass before they can succeed their Librarian. When I’m too far gone, when the beast consumes me”—he met her gaze—“you must kill me.”
Kasira recoiled, but Allaster’s clawed hands clasped hers, holding fast. “Listen to me, Kasira.” It was her name—her real name—on his lips that stilled her. “This is the fate of all Librarians. The magic corrupts our bodies, turning us into wild beasts with minds only for devastation. I’ll destroy the Library and everything in it in my rampage. I’ve seen it before.”
“Mora,” she breathed. The last partner he had cared for, who had not died in a beast mission gone wrong. Like the Librarians before her, Mora had been overwhelmed by the magic, leaving only a rabid animal behind. Mora had stood before Allaster, as he stood before Kasira now,and asked him to kill her—and he had. As had every Assistant before him.
This was why he spent so long engrossed in his books, why he left so many missions to the other mages. Because he was running out of time. Out of options. He had placed himself in a silo so that when the time came, when the mages lost him like they had lost Mora only a year before, they would not have to suffer again. No wonder May had been so determined to see Kasira and Allaster reconciled before she left. All this time, May had been carrying the burden that belonged on the Assistant’s shoulders—the dark truth of the Library’s magic.
“I tried to save her. I thought I could get through to her. But all I did was get people killed.” Allaster pulled her hand to his chest, trapping it against the frantic beat of his heart. “Mora told me before I connected to the Library’s magic. I knew what fate I’d accepted. I denied you that chance, and for that I am sorry. But no one else will be able to do it. Ineedyou, Kasira.”
His words rattled her to the core, and she ripped her hand away. “No.”
All her life she had taken from people. All her life she had left them behind. And now the one time she chose something other than herself, the one time shestayed, she was being asked to destroy it. To lose everything.
She wouldn’t. Not again.
“There has to be another way,” she implored. “I’ll find another way.”
Allaster’s hands dropped to his sides, shoulders curving with defeat. “What can you find that I and several hundred years of past Librarians could not?”
“I found the sword, didn’t I?” Kasira protested. “I will figure this out too.”
A harsh laugh scraped from Allaster’s lips, his fingers knotting in his hair. “You make it sound so simple. But this isn’t some puzzle for you to unravel, Kas. It isn’t one of your games. You cannotoutsmartthis.” He spread his claw-tipped hands, baring his transformation as if it might drive her away. “I will become a monster, and you—”
She kissed him.
His protest died on his lips, his surprise softening into something warmer. Her hands cupped his face, her fingers curling into the silken fur as his arms encircled her. She could feel the strength coiled beneath his skin, the Library’s magic coursing through both their veins in a heady rush that made her dizzy.
She held fast to him like driftwood in a raging sea, desperate to impart to him what words could not. Words were her weapons, her shield. They were the means by which she kept everyone at arm’s length, even herself. She cloaked her heart in them, too afraid to look at what lay beneath. But some things were too big for words. Some things built and built and built in you, no matter how frantically you tried to press them down, and it was that feeling, that pain and desperation andhope, that she clung to.
They broke apart, her chest heaving and his olive skin flushed beneath the dusting of silver fur. His wings had curved about them in a sheltering embrace, leaving only a faint glow of firelight.
“I would have thought,” she whispered against his lips, “that you would have learned by now not to bother telling me what I cannot do.”
